HOLD STILL, by Sally Mann.Very good biography of the photographer who is controversial at times for the photographs of her kids nude around the house and at play. An excellent photographer, the book is more than a biography, it is a look into a driven and creative mind of one of the worlds top photographers alive today.

THIS LAND: An American Portrait, by Jack Spencer. Large book of fine images of North America - USA. Interesting work. Not "tourist" photos. The man is excellent.

GENESIS, by Sebastaio Salgado. Another photo book. This one B&W images by the Brazilian Photographer. Years of documenting tragedy and conflict left him physically ill. Then he went to Nature photography and let the healing take over. An impressive book by on of the greats today.

Then, for mental junk food the JESSE STONE novels by Robert. B. Parker - along with watching the full 9 movies of them starring Tom Selleck as Jesse Stone, Police Chief of Paradise, Massachussets. The writing is spare, direct and to the point. Nothing wasted on fluff or overly long descriptions anywhere.The movies are morose, clean and well set up. None of the current "camera operator having an epileptic fit while on speed, jumping on a pogo stick" crap. The musical score is morose, quiet and even depressing at times, fitting for a main character who has major alcohol problems and can't get past the divorced wife.

The Jesse Stone movies have been cast well. Selleck IS the Police Chief, not just seeming to be in a part. The scenes are often laid out as still images with the characters in them, not sloppy or frenetic in any sense of the word. Quiet, contemplative and direct - a joy to watch.

BASEBALL, by Ken Burns. The video series. All 10 innings. I like it even more than THE CIVIL WAR. Well done, a lot of historical photographs and cinema clips from the past. Good information and a time trip to the history of the game. For me, well worth seeing more than a few times.

> BASEBALL, by Ken Burns. The video series. All 10> innings. I like it even more than THE CIVIL WAR.> Well done, a lot of historical photographs and> cinema clips from the past. Good information and a> time trip to the history of the game. For me, well> worth seeing more than a few times.

Ken Burns has created propaganda of the absolute worst kind, for example his work about the Vietnam war. But this, BASEBALL, is propaganda of the very best kind. Definitely worthy of a 2nd viewing, all 10 innings, and definitely belongs in a thread about books.

His work on Jazz is pretty good, too. Baseball and jazz, two of America’s best cultural gifts to the world.

I read Campbell and was a bit uninspired by it. I suspect this was not Campbell's fault, so much as the fact his ideas have been so widely primulgated, and so I didn't find them fresh when I encountered them in his books.

The Mystery of the Princes,Troy, Lioness, a biography of Golda Meir and some assorted mysteries and thrilers.I have also!ordered a book and the second generation Kennedys and Carly Simon's book about her friendship with Jackie Onassis

Currently reading (a) the Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism by Pascal Brucker. French philosopher on the tendency of westerners, particularly Europeans, to constantly wallow in guilt for the past behavior of their cultures/ancestors. (B) the Rubber Band by Rex Stout. An old Nero Wolfe mystery novel. The Bruckner is sort of heavy, been reading in spurts.

During commutes etc I'm listening to Will Patton reading Robicheaux by James Lee Burke. Another mystery novel

I haven't ever noticed seasonal or other trends in what I read. Whatever looks interesting at the moment.

Other recent reads include

Fascism: A Very Short Introduction by Kevin Passmore.

When Genius Failed by Roger Lowenstein. About a hedge fund staffed with Ivy League and Nobel brainiacs that collapsed very suddenly despite their very clever math equations and predictions

Glad you are reading him but books by James Lee Burke are never "another mystery". His beautiful and descriptive writing sets him apart from popular writers. I have read everything he has written and I view him as the best American writer of fiction at the present time.

Currently reading Lawrence Block's novella "Resume Speed." For rereads I like to go back to the Hornblower series by C. S. Forester and the books of Robert B. Parker.

I'm also a graduate of the C.S. Forester School of High Seas Navigation! "Ha-hmm!" I didn't grow up to be too much like Hornblower, but he's in me, somewhere... You can't love reading the entire oeuvre and not be influenced.

Not up on Dalziel and Pascoe. Probably too influenced by the TV series that I did not care for. The writer would have to go some to top Burke's literary standard. If you like British writers I would highly recommend the Bernie Gunther novels of the late Philip Kerr. Kerr has Gunther, a German police inspector, engaged in all kinds of scrapes involving people from Goebbels to Somerset Maugham. Terrific stuff IMV.

Kerr is very good. Another great author is Alan Furst, who sets his stories in remarkably accurate historical contexts.

Going further, Eric Ambler did some great stuff in roughly the same genre; and then there are some of Graham Greene's novels. A little earlier were John Buchan's very good stories and even some of Conrad's books, like the Confidential Agent.

I suspect you are familiar with many of these. The Dog's tastes may run in this direction as well.

You should try some of those others, though. I think you would like the combination of elegance, emotional insight, cynicism, and history. That's the secret to good spy stories, is it not? You read a thoroughly engaging tale and then realize, "Wow, this is so much more than a spy story!"

"Strong Poison", in which he meets the love of his life (1930), and then "Gaudy Night" (1935), in which she finally yields to his blandishments. I am a hopeless romantic. "Gaudy Night" is a murder mystery with no death.

Traggert D'Angelitila: "Eight Attempts, Seven Failures, or How I learned to Changed My Own Oil."

Moonbeam Fricatta: "Crystals and Being"

William Calvin: "The River That Flows Uphill"

There are days I read a book a day. It's easy with Libby. Of course they are books that are fun and that I can't put down because I just have to see how they end!

If any of you are fans of fun Sci/Fi, I'd like to recommend a 16 book series, with some spin-offs: "Date Night on Union Station". I'm on Amazon's read-for-free plan. I've read the first 15 at least twice. I recently finished the 16th and the three spin-offs to date. I found them to be very, very satisfying in this genre. Yes, the good guys win. I'll give you a taste: A beloved dog reincarnates! Talk about happy times!!! Jesu Cristo, I'm tearing just thinking about it...

Next up: Where the Crawdads Sing (Delia Owens) and Redemption by David Baldacci

Oh, the joys of Kindle!

I feel like a kid who has been turned loose in the Kindle store with Daddy's credit card! Actually, it's MY credit card, but it seems pretty painless. I LOVE Kindle! And if my eyes get too tired to read, I listen to favorite authors on CD versions of books I have already read and still enjoy.

I've loved Jonathan Kellerman since his first work and have read most of his stuff since the beginning. I read The Wedding Guest when it first came out and was less impressed than some of his work and I can't remember why.

I just requested it from the local library to see what I missed the first time.

I am the owner of a Kindle, but I still prefer physical books. I use Kindle for when I'm traveling.

A lot of the books widely available on Kindle fall into the following categories:

* Total amateurs, whose writing (and sometimes editing) skills leave a lot to be desired.* People who are giving away their books for free or for a very low price, which undercuts writers' ability to make a living from their trade.

Amazon is doing a lot of harm to writing and publishing in this way, which is why I prefer traditional methods. As for the amateurs and self-publishers, I don't deny that some of them are good, but many of them aren't and there is no quality control. A lot of the amateurs also just fall into mediocrity - I find it easier to weed out mediocrity looking at printed books.

I'm currently re-reading one of the classics I read as a teenager, the "Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser" series by Fritz Leiber.

I've made it a point recently to revisit books I haven't read for over 30 or 40 years because I have such a different perspective on them now, and those differences are fascinating to me. I've always been interested in what others read and what they take away from what they've read, and now I'm doing the same with my younger self as though he were a separate person. What made him tick? Why was he drawn to this or that? What insight (or lack of it) did he glean from his reading that lead to subsequent reading choices?

Was there some a common, yet unacknowledged, theme among the authors I'd chosen (both fiction and non-fiction, and across genres)?

BTW, Leiber was a much better writer than I realized back then or expected now.

Loving this thread. I’ve looked up some of your great suggestions. I have some time to read this summer and plan to take advantage of it.

Couple of my recent favorites are Varina, by Charles Frazier, The Great Alone, because now I have to read EVERYTHING written by Kristin Hannah, and All The Way Back Home, by J.R. Rain (my go-to author for a mind-numbing mass market read when you need one).

I'm still slogging through Mueller Report. I hesitated to mention that I am reading it here. I think it is important for every informed voter to read for themselves and not get a biased opinion second hand.

I'm trying to decide if I want to read Jared Diamond's Upheaval. I've heard some good and bad things about it.

dagny Wrote:-------------------------------------------------------> I'm still slogging through Mueller Report. I> hesitated to mention that I am reading it here. I> think it is important for every informed voter to> read for themselves and not get a biased opinion> second hand.>> I'm trying to decide if I want to read Jared> Diamond's Upheaval. I've heard some good and bad> things about it.>>> I love the book recommendations here. Thanks!

I annotate or might make notes that I keep in the front cover of books. I love to hold books, but I can adjust font size on Kindle and annotate there if I need to.I think I might cheat and listen the rest of Volume II on Audible.

History and philosophy I underline and marginalize, usually with a sentence summary on every page. By the time I'm done, no one else wants the books--and I need to keep them because they are records and summaries that I can use to refresh my memory years or decades letter.

I'm little better with fiction: underscoring beautiful passages, cursing at grammatical errors, sometimes cross-referencing. . . Books are not for passive consumption but rather for passionate engagement with the authors!

Lot's Wife Wrote:-------------------------------------------------------> I'm like that. I cannot read without a pen.>> History and philosophy I underline and> marginalize, usually with a sentence summary on> every page. By the time I'm done, no one else> wants the books--and I need to keep them because> they are records and summaries that I can use to> refresh my memory years or decades letter.>> I'm little better with fiction: underscoring> beautiful passages, cursing at grammatical errors,> sometimes cross-referencing. . . Books are not> for passive consumption but rather for passionate> engagement with the authors!

If I have to look up a word, or a fact ("EXACTLY when was the Zohar written?"--this just happened today), I usually highlight what I don't know in the text, pencil a neat "bubble" around it, and write down whatever it is I then found out on a page margin.

Even in fiction, I want to know things like where referenced places ARE. (I mentally "file" things geographically; I always have.)

When mentioned places have been created by the writer, either because these places actually do not exist in real life, or because the writer is trying to avoid unnecessary controversy about a real place once the work is published, I am always relieved to find out the true facts behind the mention.

When, because they become relevant again, I look at those books in later years, then my notes and highlights are automatic reviews, and they're often like forgotten friends from your school years, who you accidentally run into much later.

My books, after I "finish" any of them, are hopeless as potential resales for the used book market.

That being said, I would sure like to see some used books which were annotated by the owner, if those owners were people I particularly appreciate, like Aldous Huxley.

I print out maps to use when reading, often drawing in lines and dates; and additionally sketch out timelines and, with difficult books, pen chapter summaries on blank pages at the front and the back. This takes time but it helps me understand what the author is saying and it strongly reinforces my memory of the contents. Then years later, when a question arises, I often recall the pattern of notes and lines and can then go back to the book and find the page that I was looking for and retrieve the information I had forgotten.

We had to move some time ago and I had to throw out a lot of books because of spacial constraints. I went through and decided which ones were so important, themselves and the annotations, that I couldn't afford to lose them. Many hundreds of others went away, sadly.

And I did turn and look back.

PS: A friend's employer recently acquired a robot that moves around the building and delivers things to people. They needed a name for the thing, and I proposed "Huxley." It seemed obvious to me, but they ended up going with Wall-E.

Human Wrote:-------------------------------------------------------> Envious! That strikes me as very worthwhile. I> hope to do the same one day.>> But first, I have to make room to complete In> Search Of Lost Time.>> Human, searching for time...

Proust? I think you do need to take time on that! I've never been able to bring myself to read it. I'd be interested to know what you make of it. I spent a lot of time rwsding Joyce (not really worth it), Vikram Seth (definitely not worth it) and Tolstoy (who was worth it). As for Ayn Rand fugedaboutit. That's time won't get back.

I just finished "Dying of Whiteness". It reads like a text book - rather dull reading yet it highlights much of our social condition in the Southern US. Since I live in Tennessee and the author spends a great deal of time discussing my fellow citizens here, I had to read it. From my personal experiences, the book is an excellent summary.

Just started some fun reading for sitting out on the porch. I enjoy dystopian novels as the real world is too depressing. Just started "The Atlantis Gene". I have other science fiction waiting to be read.

Last year I read Bryan Stevenson's critically acclaimed memoir Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, published in 2014. It was suggested to me locally, being in Alabama, but it impacted me more than I expected. It is about how far Stevenson went to get justice for a black prisoner.

"Kennedy Babylon"* (2 volumes) by Howie Carr, Boston muckracker extraordinaire and expert on the Kennedys, also

"Chappaquiddick," Leo Damore, with a new introduction by Carr. It was originally published as "Senatorial Privilege," and will be my beach reading this summer. Exhaustive and extensively footnoted. (Get it-- Chappaquiddick, on the beach, maybe near the Dike Bridge?)

I also hope to get to "Jesus On Trial" (David Limbaugh) and a book on apologetics, Paul E. Little, "Know What You Believe." Right now I'm in selective chapters of Brian C. Hales, "Modern Polygamy and Mormon Fundamentalism" for research. (Hales is LDS.)

Lastly on my pile is James C. Nelson's "The Polar Bear Expedition," about a US military force in northern USSR during the closing days of WWI, something very few Americans know anything about, but the Russians never forgot.

I question the choice of Brian Hales unless your purpose is to get a sense of modern apologetics. But his books are systemically misleading and, perhaps worse, banal. If you want to understand LDS polygamy, there are better places to go.

HITLER IN LOS ANGELES by Steven J. Ross. When local Nazis attempted a revolution on the West Coast in 1933 to overthrow the FDR administration. Silver shirts infiltrated the entire LA police dept.

NAZIS IN NEWARK, by Warren Grover. East Coast mafia at war with Depression Nazis and German spies in New York trying to take over the U.S. gov't.

SATAN IN THE DANCE HALL: Rev. John Roach Straton, Social Dancing, and Morality in 1920s New York City. When 1920s fundies regulated and outlawed ballroom dancing because it caused upwards of 80% of the city's out-of-wedlock pregnancies (jazz caused 70% of pregnancies).

I thought I'd report back about the novels that I read aloud to my class this year, since I got so many good suggestions last fall --

Stone Fox -- a personal favorite

Charlotte's Web -- when my students are afraid of a spider, I just tell them, "It's one of Charlotte's grandchildren" and they relax.

Little House in the Big Woods -- my kids where a bit "meh" about this book, but I appreciated the accurate depiction of frontier life. If I had to do it over again, I might have gone with Little House on the Big Prairie instead, but I wanted to start with the first book in the series.

The Boxcar Children -- I like how the children depicted in this story are so self-sufficient. I think a lot of modern kids can relate to that. As soon as I started reading this book, the rest of the Boxcar series in my classroom library became very popular.

For free reading, my second graders (who are excellent readers) are currently consumed by graphic novels. They pass them back and forth. A favorite is the Dog Man series.

And with any luck, that will conclude my classroom career. I have a brand new certification and am currently looking internally for a teaching position in a specialty area. I start packing up my classroom tomorrow.